What if you could experience Mumbai not as a tourist destination, but as a city you could see, feel and remember?
Mumbai. A city seen, a city felt is a visual portrait of Mumbai told through photographs, short reflections and carefully researched fragments of the city’s history.
Rather than approaching Mumbai as a conventional travel book, Anurag Thakurta looks at the details that give the city its unmistakable character: its people, streets, sea, monsoon, faith, food, architecture, movement and everyday contradictions.
At a time when cities are increasingly understood through skylines, infrastructure and statistics, this book returns the focus to lived experience. Mumbai emerges not simply as a metropolis of extraordinary ambition, but as a city defined by coexistence, resilience and the constant negotiation for space.
From Ganapati celebrations and historic neighbourhoods to railway platforms, street-food stalls, workers and quiet everyday moments, the book invites readers to look beyond the familiar.
For those who know Mumbai, it offers recognition alongside discovery. For those encountering the city from afar, it offers something more intimate than a tourist introduction.
This is not an exhaustive documentation of Mumbai. It is a deeply personal portrait of a city that became home — an ode to its people, its stories and its extraordinary ability to hide beauty in plain sight.
“I know this place, but I did not know this story.”
That is the experience Anurag Thakurta hopes readers take away from Mumbai. A city seen, a city felt.
Through intimate photography and concise historical reflections, Thakurta looks beyond Mumbai’s famous landmarks to uncover the human stories embedded in its streets, neighbourhoods, traditions and everyday life.
The book offers journalists an opportunity to explore:
- Mumbai beyond its iconic skyline
- The relationship between photography and urban memory
- The overlooked histories behind familiar places
- Mumbai’s working-class communities and informal workforce
- Ganapati and the evolution of public religious celebration
- Street food as a reflection of Mumbai’s social diversity
- Migration, ambition and the making of the modern city
- How photography can preserve a changing city for future generations
- The experience of finding home in a city that constantly challenges and transforms you
1. Can you provide an overview of your book and how it addresses key challenges in the world today?
Mumbai. A city seen, a city felt is a visual portrait of Mumbai told through photographs, short reflections and carefully researched fragments of the city’s history. Rather than approaching Mumbai as a conventional travel book, it looks at the city through the details that give it its character: its people, streets, sea, monsoon, faith, food, architecture, movement and everyday contradictions.
At a time when cities are increasingly understood through skylines, infrastructure and statistics, the book brings the focus back to lived experience. Mumbai is a city of extraordinary ambition, but also of coexistence, resilience and constant negotiation for space. The book attempts to preserve those human textures — the things that are easy to overlook precisely because they are so familiar.
2. What inspired you to write this book, and what specific expertise or experiences do you bring to the subject matter?
The book began with photography rather than with the intention of writing a book. Over time, photographing Mumbai made me notice how much history and meaning sit behind scenes that we routinely pass without a second glance.
A railway platform, an old neighbourhood, a street-food stall, a festival procession or a worker resting beside a construction site can each reveal something about how the city came to be.
I am not approaching Mumbai as a historian looking at it from a distance, but as someone who has experienced the city and photographed it at street level. That combination of observation, curiosity and personal connection shaped the book.
The photographs capture what I saw; the accompanying text tries to understand why it matters.
3. Could you share some of the most valuable insights or takeaways that readers can expect from your book?
The central takeaway is that Mumbai cannot be understood through landmarks alone. Its real identity lies in the relationship between place and people.
Readers will encounter familiar Mumbai icons, but the book repeatedly looks beyond the obvious image. Ganapati, for example, is not only a spectacular contemporary celebration; its public form also carries a history connected with Lokmanya Tilak and the late nineteenth century.
Mumbai’s street food is not merely culinary culture — it is also one of the city’s great social equalisers. Its working population is not simply part of the background; generations of workers have physically built and sustained the city.
The book therefore invites readers to look twice: first at the photograph, and then at the story beneath it.
4. Can you highlight any case studies or real-world examples from your book that illustrate the principles you discuss?
The book is built around real places, people and traditions rather than fictional case studies.
One example is Mumbai’s public Ganapati tradition, whose popularisation by Lokmanya Tilak in 1893 transformed a religious celebration into a larger public and social phenomenon.
Another is the city’s working-class story — from dockyards and textile mills to today’s vast informal workforce — which is reflected through images of people working, travelling and sometimes resting in the very spaces they help build.
Street food offers another lens. Vada pav, bhel, pav bhaji and the city’s khau gallis tell a story that goes beyond food: people from very different social and economic backgrounds often share the same small counter, pavement or stall.
These everyday examples reveal Mumbai’s history through lived experience.
5. Are there any particular challenges or obstacles you encountered while writing this book, and how did you overcome them?
The biggest challenge was deciding what to leave out. Mumbai is almost impossible to contain within a finite number of pages. Every neighbourhood, community and street seems capable of opening another story.
The second challenge was balancing image and information. A coffee-table book should not become a history textbook, but neither should the historical context feel decorative or superficial.
The approach was therefore to keep the photographs central and use concise “City Roots” or origin-story notes to add context without interrupting the visual experience.
The process became one of editing rather than accumulation: choosing photographs and stories that together create a coherent portrait of the city rather than attempting an exhaustive catalogue of it.
6. What do you hope readers will gain from reading your book, and how do you envision it making a positive impact on their lives?
I hope the book changes the way readers look at Mumbai — including people who have lived here for years.
The ideal response is recognition followed by discovery: “I know this place, but I did not know this story.”
For someone who knows Mumbai, the book should evoke memory and affection while revealing overlooked layers of the city. For someone encountering Mumbai from elsewhere, it should offer something more intimate than a tourist’s introduction.
Ultimately, the book is an invitation to notice. Cities are often experienced at speed. Photography has the ability to arrest that movement for a moment, and history gives that moment depth.
If readers begin to look more closely at the people and places around them, the book will have achieved what it set out to do.
7. In a rapidly changing environment, how does your book stay relevant and adaptable for readers over time?
The book is anchored in the enduring character of Mumbai rather than in a snapshot of current trends.
Buildings change, infrastructure expands and neighbourhoods evolve, but many of the forces that define Mumbai — migration, ambition, density, faith, enterprise, the monsoon, the sea and the daily negotiation between individual aspiration and collective life — have shaped the city across generations.
The historical notes also connect the present to the past, allowing contemporary photographs to sit within a longer continuum.
That is what gives the book longevity: it documents Mumbai at a particular moment while telling stories whose roots extend far beyond that moment. In time, even the contemporary photographs will themselves become a record of how the city once looked and lived.
See Mumbai differently.
Discover the streets, people, histories and fleeting moments that make the city extraordinary in Mumbai. A city seen, a city felt by Anurag Thakurta.
If you have ever loved Mumbai, lived in Mumbai, dreamed in Mumbai, or simply wondered what makes this city so unforgettable, this book invites you to look again.
Order your copy on Amazon today and experience Mumbai through a deeply personal lens.
